Bel of the Brawl--A Belfast McGrath Mystery

by Maggie McConnon

  And now he was getting married, the years between us having created a chasm in which two lives had developed independent of one another despite the fact that they never should have parted.

  I had a boss who once told me, that when things were crazy and I couldn’t see the forest for the trees: focus on the business problem. Was it that we hadn’t ordered enough oysters? Or that we had run out of a regular client’s favorite wine? Nothing personal, no one to blame. Just business. I rolled over and picked up my phone, clearing my throat of the uncried tears that had lodged there while I tried to sleep.

  “Kevin? It’s me,” I said. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  I wasn’t sure where he was but wherever it was, it was quiet. He was home. But he wasn’t alone. “I don’t want to go over that,” he said cryptically.

  “Not that. It’s something else. Something more important. Something I can only tell you,” I said. He remained silent. “We have to pretend that this never happened.”

  “What do you need to talk to me about?” he asked, his voice taking a more professional tone, deepening.

  “Pauline.” I hesitated. “But all off the record.”

  “Why do I feel like I don’t want to hear what you’re going to say?”

  “Ah, you know me well, Hanson,” I said.

  “I’ll meet you by the picnic table in an hour,” he said. Before he hung up, his voice dropped to a whisper. “I love her, you know. I really, really do.”

  I hung up. I did know.

  Most people would need to know which picnic table, but the one that he referenced needed no further description. I knew exactly where he wanted us to meet.

  I got up and showered, washing away the remnants of the shame I felt or trying to, at least. It was a kiss, nothing else. Just a little kiss. I knew in my heart that I was justifying my role in all of this, the thought of the beautiful Mary Ann D’Amato and how hurt she would be if she knew what we had done washing down the drain like the suds from my shampoo. Brendan was one thing but Mary Ann was another. She had dated Kevin for years, waiting for him to propose like a dutiful, albeit kind of too dutiful, girlfriend—far longer than I would have waited—and now had her guy. Her wedding would be beautiful, just like she was. I would make sure of that.

  I drove over to the edge of the water, where it used to lap up against the rocks, but no more. The drought had taken its toll and water was in scarce supply in the tiny river. Kevin was already waiting for me, two sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil in front of him on the scarred, pocked wood of the table.

  “Sausage, egg, and cheese,” he said, handing me one.

  “Extra grease from the grill?” I asked, the smell of it making my mouth water.

  “Just the way you like it. I told Tony at the deli it was for you. Said he hadn’t seen you since you got home.”

  I patted my midsection. “My cooking alone makes for some tough days trying to stay healthy,” I said. “Seeing Tony would push me over the edge and right into a quadruple bypass.”

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. “So, what’s going on, Bel? What’s happening?”

  “Remember Pauline? The other waitress at the Manor?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I wanted to question her after the wedding but she was gone. You know, after you poisoned the groom,” he said. Seeing my face, he recanted. “Just kidding! Did she ever come back?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, not exactly. But I did see her Thursday.”

  “And? Did you tell her I wanted to talk to her?”

  I shook my head. “Didn’t have a chance. But she did say something interesting. Weird.”

  “What?” Kevin asked.

  “She, too, thinks Gerry Mason was poisoned and not by me or my beets. Not that she said, anyway.”

  Kevin tried to play the professional but wasn’t successful; his eyes grew wide. “What do you mean?”

  I told him everything, start to finish, ending with the chase yesterday. “And the car chasing her belongs to James Casey.”

  “Do I want to know how you know that?” he said. I had told him that I never did see the driver’s face.

  “You do not,” I said, knowing full well that he had figured out that I must have enlisted Cargan’s help in solving that mystery. “Here’s the thing, Kevin. Pauline was here illegally.”

  “And the other girls?”

  “Them, too,” I said. “You see why I need your full confidence on this.”

  He rubbed his hands over his face. “Is there any chance your parents didn’t know?”

  “Not a one.”

  He grimaced, putting his sandwich down, his appetite gone.

  “So there it is. I need your help and we can’t say a word. Ridiculous, right?”

  He leaned in, preparing to tell me something I already knew. “Your parents are in a whole lot of trouble if anyone finds out about this,” he said.

  “Don’t you think I know that?” I said. “So will you help me?”

  His sigh was inscrutable; I couldn’t tell if it was resignation or something else. “Yes. Of course I’ll help you.”

  “Thanks, Kev,” I said.

  “Isn’t Cargan’s help enough?” he asked.

  “Would be,” I said, “if he hadn’t fallen in love with her. He’s not, as one would say, objective in this whole thing. And we need real professionals here. Not professionals on a mental-health break from the police department.”

  “Cargan is a great cop, Bel. A great cop.” He thought for a moment, looking up at the blue sky. “But I could see how that might change things a bit.”

  “I know that, Kevin, but we need someone on the inside, someone who can really help us.”

  His face told me everything: he didn’t want to be involved but he knew he had to help me. “I don’t know what I can do that will help you if I can’t tell anyone anything, but I’ll do my best.”

  I touched his hand and he flinched as if my fingers were on fire. “Thank you.”

  “I have to admit, Bel: it’s been strange since you came back to town,” he said.

  “It has been,” I said.

  We got up and walked toward our cars. He opened the door to his personal vehicle, an SUV of some kind that traversed the rocks on the parking area with ease. “I’ll call you if I find out anything.”

  “And, Kevin?”

  “What, Bel?”

  “Tell Mary Ann that I would be happy to make duck ballotine for the wedding.”

  CHAPTER Thirty-one

  I regretted it the minute it was out of my mouth but there you had it. I was going to make what was considered one of the most complicated dishes in the culinary world for one hundred people and I had no one to blame but myself. I thought about that as I drove through town, my concerned reverie interrupted by the sight of a guy walking down the main drag in the village, a guy I hadn’t thought about all day and with good reason: I had a lot on my plate of both the personal and professional variety. I pulled the car over, put a couple of coins in the meter. I already had a ticket for speeding and not having a license; the last thing I needed was another run-in with the “law,” Jane McDermott, the longtime parking enforcer, having a tangential relationship to actual law enforcement. She did take her uniform and her job very seriously, regardless. It also helped that she wore an invisibility cloak; that was the only explanation I could come up with for the fact that one minute she wasn’t there and the next, she was.

  “Domnall!” I called as I ran down the street.

  The guy turned and looked at me, breaking into a run that, to my mind, was completely unnecessary and beyond my current athletic abilities. “I just want a word!” I yelled as I dodged the other people on the street, running straight into a jogging stroller that held not one, not two, but three babies. The mother, far too fit for having just birthed three children, her yoga pants hugging a very shapely behind, a shirt that said NAMASTE accentuating her perky breasts, gave me a hard “hey!” as I charged past. I turned and lo
oked and the babies seemed fine so I kept going, running after a guy who had remarkable speed. The one thing he didn’t have going for him, however, was knowledge of the little streets of Foster’s Landing and how if you cut down the one on my left, you would come out exactly where I could tell he was heading, the street that ran alongside Oaktree Lane.

  I cut through the parking lot of the Episcopal church and then down a small alley and waited until he was just rounding the corner before jumping out, scaring the hell out of him, and giving me just enough time to grab his jacket collar and bring him to the ground. “You’re pissing me off, Domnall,” I said. “Why were you running?”

  “You were chasing me!” he said from his place on the ground. He grabbed his left elbow and rubbed it vigorously. “Skinned my elbow. What are you, crazy?”

  “Crazy?” I asked, getting up. “I called your name and you took off. Who’s the crazy one?”

  He rolled over and got to his knees, finally hoisting himself up. For a young guy, he wasn’t particularly limber and I felt bad for knocking him to the pavement. I held out my hand to steady him. He bent over and coughed loudly into a handkerchief that he took from his pocket.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. He was tall and thin, thin in the way of someone who never had much meat on his bones to begin with, one of those fast-metabolism people whose inner workings were a mystery to someone like me who looked at food and gained weight.

  “Yes,” he said. “Just a touch of pneumonia.”

  “A touch of pneumonia?” I said. “And you flew here from Ireland?” I took a good look at him. “You don’t look good. Your skin is the color of cement.”

  “Ireland?” he asked. “Yeah, Ireland.” He straightened his shirt. “I’m fine. Have you heard from her?”

  My face told the whole story. I wasn’t the best liar in town and clearly didn’t have a great poker face. I didn’t have a tell like Mom who always licked her lips when she was lying, but in this instance, it was written all over my face.

  “You have, haven’t you?” He had another coughing fit, which gave me the opportunity to change the subject.

  “Listen, I’m taking you back to the Manor. You’re not well. Where are you really staying?” I asked.

  He mentioned a motel out on the edge of town; it was a seedy place and I never could figure out how it survived financially. Most likely a “hot sheets” place that charged by the hour, it had been there for as long as I could remember yet always looked vaguely uninhabited, even though we all knew people must have been in there at various points in its history.

  “What happened to Henry Miller and his lodging?” I asked, knowing full well that there was no Henry Miller now or ever. “You can’t stay at that motel,” I said, taking his arm. “You’re coming home with me.”

  I guess I was more like Dad than I wanted to admit, bringing home strays. I just hoped Domnall didn’t turn out to be like the feral cat that Dad had arrived at the Manor with one day, the one that bit me before proceeding to tear all of the drapes in the bridal suite and then catapulting itself out of an open window, never to be seen again.

  Domnall was silent the whole way to the Manor, but as we drove up the driveway, he turned to me. “Is she safe?”

  “I wish I could tell you, Domnall,” I said.

  “Please call me Donnie. My friends do.”

  “Okay, Donnie. I don’t know if she’s safe. Seems like she might be in a spot of trouble.” I pulled onto the parking pad outside of Dad’s studio.

  “She’s always in a spot of trouble. That’s the way she is,” he said. “I thought it was exciting at first but it’s not exciting. It’s fecking exhausting.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I asked.

  “Well, you know. This and that,” he said. From the tone of his voice, I could tell that he didn’t want to besmirch her reputation to me and part of me was glad about that, even though I was curious.

  “So you’re really still married?” I asked.

  He held up his left hand, wincing from the pain in his elbow. A gold band glittered on his hand, the hand of a guy who labored. “We’re still really married. And I still really love her.”

  “She’s been here a long time,” I said.

  “And we’ve been married a long time. She was always supposed to come home after the summer season, but she never did. Kept sending money, but never came back.” He couldn’t look at me, so he looked out the window. “I sound like an eejit.”

  “And her ma isn’t sick?”

  “I think it’s pretty clear that her ma isn’t the sick one.”

  “Then what?” I asked but his face closed down; I wasn’t getting anything else for the time being. I thought food might be the thing that softened him, made him tell me what was really going on.

  I led him into the Manor and straight to the kitchen. I didn’t ask him when he had last eaten; it was obvious he was hungry by the way he stole a look into the refrigerator when I opened the door. I pulled out some eggs and cheese and a loaf of multigrain bread and took a few minutes to make an omelet and some toast. I pushed a plate of butter across the counter to him. “Dad gets the butter from an Irish distributor. It will taste just like you’re home,” I said.

  I put the kettle on and made us both a cup of tea while he ate. When I turned around, two steaming mugs of tea in my hands, his head was on the counter and his thin back rose and fell as muffled sobs filled the room. He raised his head and ran his hands over his face. “Thank you for your kindness,” he said. “I’m sorry I ran. I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  “What did you lie about?” I asked, putting my tea down. Suddenly, I wasn’t so thirsty.

  “About it all.” He pulled the ring off and put it on his plate. “It’s not her ma. And we are married. We do love each other. And she was supposed to come home. This time for sure.”

  “Really? She was going home?” I asked. I don’t know why he believed her this time if she had failed him in the past.

  “End of August, she told me.”

  And now it was October.

  “Why now, Donnie? Why would you believe her this time?”

  He looked up at me and I knew the answer before he said it.

  “Because I’m dying.”

  CHAPTER Thirty-two

  Mary Ann D’Amato asked me to come into the foyer for a private chat but since the ceiling is so high and the sound reverberates, I took her up to the bridal suite instead. A plush Persian rug coupled with heavy drapery and a thick door made it the perfect place to have a conversation that no one else could hear.

  She was a medical professional but it was clear that what Donnie had told her had unsettled her. “It’s lung cancer, Bel. He’s awfully young for it but he did grow up in a home with two smokers and has smoked himself since he was a teen.”

  “So everything he told you checks out?” I asked. There had been so many lies perpetrated that I wasn’t sure what—or who—to believe anymore. But lying about having cancer would have been stooping pretty low. I wasn’t sure even Donnie was capable of that, so when he told me his situation I was inclined to believe him. Mary Ann was insurance that my instincts were correct.

  Mary Ann nodded, her face sad. “It does, Bel. And from the sounds of it,” she said, pointing to the stethoscope around her neck, a medical bag in her hands, “it’s pretty serious.”

  I could tell by the look on her face that she was very worried. “Are you sure?”

  “I mean, he recited some treatments, medical terminology.” She sighed. “If he’s not sick, he’s an incredible liar.”

  “Why is he here?” I asked.

  “I stuck to the medicine of it, Bel. I didn’t ask any other questions and he didn’t volunteer any additional information.”

  Standing with Mary Ann in the bridal suite, I almost forgot that I should feel uncomfortable around her, and it was only when the sun hit the room in a certain way, casting a glow around her head that glinted off the steel of the stethoscope, that I did feel the s
hame of what had happened between me and Kevin. This woman was truly an angel and not deserving of what had transpired between me and her fiancé. Although it would have made me feel better to confess everything to her, assuage my guilty conscience, I did nothing but thank her for coming to the Manor as we walked onto the second-story landing.

  “I really appreciate it, Mary Ann,” I said.

  “It’s not a problem, Bel. I’ll help in any way I can,” she said. She leaned in and gave me a hug. “You’re family.” As we walked back out, she said, “He should rest. He’s going to stay here in the Manor for a while?” she asked.

  “That’s the plan,” I said.

  I walked her through the foyer and closed the heavy door behind her. I went into the kitchen and regarded Donnie, still sitting at the counter. I leaned against the sink and crossed my arms over my chest. “So, tell me everything,” I said. “Everything. Tell me what’s going on because if you don’t, we can’t help you.”

  He had finally stopped crying and was coming back to life after a meal and some attention. “Your friend is really pretty.”

  “I know,” I said. “Inside and out.”

  “She says she’s marrying your high-school sweetheart.” He looked down at the counter, at his empty plate of food. “That must be hard.”

  “She said that?” I asked.

  “She said you guys dated. Were serious.”

  I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a leftover piece of the McCarthy wedding cake, this one a luscious chocolate with a raspberry filling, a piece that had escaped Cargan’s roving eye and that remained untouched. I put it on a plate and gave it to Donnie. “It would be hard if we were still in high school but we’re not. We’re older now…”

  “Middle-aged,” he said.